The Facts:
N.C . State’s open-campus policy has led to many non-student related incidents on-campus. During the past week, 11 percent of all incidents reported were non-student related.
One of the many perks of public universities is the freedom of movement that comes with an open campus. An open campus is not fenced or walled in from the surrounding area, and allows access to the community. According to Jon Barnwell, patrol division commander for campus police, N.C. State is known as an institution for all North Carolinians. This link between the University and the community offers students a glance into living in the real world. Not gated from society, it is the students responsibility to keep themselves and their campus safe.
Throughout their collegiate career, students will find themselves walking back to the dorm at all hours of the night. In this walk, they may come across a suspicious-looking person roaming around campus. This observation is often left unreported, and the student merely blows it off, not even giving it a second thought. While campus police do all they can to patrol the campus, the real solution to preventing such incidents falls on the students who observe the behavior. As a student it is your responsibility to be aware and report suspicious behavior.
The ability to report observations is the first step in the process for holding students accountable for the safety of their fellow classmates. Another aspect is becoming educated on the resources we can use to protect ourselves. The emergency blue light service allows easy access to emergency contact in the event of an unsafe incident. The safety escort transports students safely from areas on, and some off, campus. Along with these, the over-publicized phone number and contact information of the campus police provides easy access to our cell-phone ridden society.
The duty to repost suspicious behavior is followed by spreading awareness of this responsibility to others. If other students engage their friends on this duty to report such behaviors, we have multiple fronts to confront any safety-compromising incidents.
The reason such a heavy responsibility falls on the shoulders of the individual students is a variation of the common psychological phenomena–the bystander effect. The bystander effect is why people who witness a crime often do not report it–they think someone else will. Just think, if everyone who sees suspicious activities do not report it, the risk of an incident occurring increase. Therefore, with the knowledge of resources and responsibility to keep students safe, bystanders may now report these risky behaviors.
This campus allows students and their visitors to come and go as they please and experience life outside the dorm room, but it should not be at the cost of its students’ safety. By keeping aware of one’s surroundings and reporting any suspicious activities, just like in real life, students can protect the experience of an open-campus in a safe way.
